Tag Archives: port

Atari A to Z: Up’n Down

Up’n Down is not an arcade game I’m especially familiar with — and I’ve also learned it’s one that people often get confused with Data East’s Bump ‘n Jump, for reasons that are probably obvious.

The Atari 8-bit version here is not a bad port at all — though it does suffer from a few glaring technical issues that make it a little tricky to truly enjoy at times.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari ST A to Z: Moon Patrol

Moon Patrol is a great arcade game, and it’s had some excellent ports over the years. The Atari ST one was quite late, but it certainly nails the visuals.

The gameplay, however, is another matter; there’s something about Atari ST Moon Patrol that just doesn’t quite feel right. Still, if you want a game that looks like Moon Patrol but provides a slightly different challenge to the versions you may be more familiar with, it might be worth a look — it’s not a bad game, after all!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari ST A to Z: LED Storm

LED Storm is not an arcade game I played back in the day, but after spending some time with the Atari ST version here, I’m kind of curious to.

If you like Data East’s classic Bump ‘n’ Jump, you’ll probably get along with LED Storm, since it’s a similar sort of idea: drive fast car from top-down perspective, hop over obstacles and onto the heads of enemies, yell at the inherently and deliberately unfair design of ’80s and ’90s arcade games.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Retro Select: After Burner

After we covered the Atari ST version of After Burner a little while back, a few people reached out to me and told me to take a look at the PC Engine version. So I did.

Good Lord, that version leaves the ST version in the absolute dust. And on a platform with an 8-bit processor to boot. Turns out there was at least one platform out there of producing a thoroughly respectable version of After Burner that was almost as good as the arcade version… apart from the “canyon” level, but we can probably forgive that.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Atari ST A to Z: After Burner

Back in the day, we all knew that home ports of the most impressive arcade games were never going to match up to playing on original hardware. But we took what we could get.

Such was the case with Argonaut Software’s port of Sega’s After Burner to Atari ST. It, of course, pales in comparison to the arcade version — but when you didn’t have ready access to that arcade version, I can attest that you would absolutely find a way to be happy with this!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Super Breakout

Super Breakout for Atari 2600 is one of the best adaptations of the classic block-breaker out there — and much more fun than the arcade version due to its far more reasonably sized paddles!

It also plays host to a spectacularly overblown and completely unnecessary narrative setup. Because when you’re knocking bricks out of a wall, what you really need is some sort of narrative motivation, right?

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z Flashback: Sky Diver

Sky Diver for Atari 2600 is a conversion of the arcade game of the same name, originally developed by Owen Rubin and brought home by Jim Huether.

In typical Atari 2600 arcade conversion tradition, the home version offers a variety of different ways to play — including challenging modes with moving platforms, as well as a “Chicken” mode where only the first player to land gets the points!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Dig Dug: Diggin’ Dirty

One of the interesting things about fully exploring retro gaming is discovering the subtle differences between different versions of a game.

Back in the early to mid ’80s, there were sometimes quite significant differences between the various platforms’ take on an established game. This was due to a combination of factors: most frequently it was down to the technical limitations of the host platforms, but sometimes it was due to the programmers responsible for the ports not having all of the resources they needed, and consequently having to do the coder’s equivalent of holding things together with sticky tape.

Namco’s port of its classic arcade title Dig Dug for the Famicom — easily accessible today as part of the Namco Museum Collection 1 cartridge for the Evercade retro gaming platform — is a good example of (probably) the former. Either way, it’s a distinctive version of Dig Dug that is well worth playing, even if you’re well familiar with the arcade original!

Continue reading Dig Dug: Diggin’ Dirty

Evercade A to Z: Side Pocket

I am bad at pool. Real pool, that is. But also video game pool. Although I am marginally less bad at video game pool than I am at real pool.

Data East’s Side Pocket, seen here as part of the Data East Collection 1 cartridge for the Evercade, at least makes the experience of being bad at video game pool pleasantly entertaining by providing a smooth jazz soundtrack, some pretty ladies and a series of completely unreasonable trick shots with which to challenge yourself. Plus no onlookers who have had a few too many pints laughing at your incompetence. Ideal.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Atari ST A to Z: Paperboy

Porting an arcade game to home computers often wasn’t an immediate process back in the days of the 8- and 16-bit microcomputers. In fact, sometimes it took a good few years!

Such was the case with Paperboy from Atari Games, which first hit arcades in 1985 and didn’t come to Atari ST until a full four years later! Elite put together a rather solid port that played well, but which was regarded as somewhat “outdated” by reviewers of the time.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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